You gather around the comfortable fire at the tavern, in a remote town where adventure is to be found.

"Then we are agreed?" asks Roswitha, a priestess who has decided to go out of the sheltered cloister and into the big wide world. "We will swear this pact of loyalty, to achieve justice and glory for all?" Everyone nods.

You all swear a pact as blood-brethren, to seek good and avoid evil, and to bring everlasting honor and glory to your names.

You look around at each other. One of you, Zeni, is a battle-scarred veteran who has seen the full horrors of what humans are willing to do to each other. "Now taht we have a goal," Zeni remarks wryly, "how shall we achieve it?"

"Let's visit the market and the guilds in search of better equipment and more training," suggests Sugihara. She has studied and scribed for her whole life, and loathes risk. Above all, she fears that someone will accuse her of making a mistake. "I've also heard that the churches and monasteries may take on students. Once we find some teachers, we can just stay here and work at various things until the money runs low!"

Everyone nods, even Rory the Rascal. "A wise plan," remarks Rory, "but why not take action now? Lowlives infest the back streets here at night. We can gain repute, experience, and a bit of plunder by eliminating these scum. Let us also listen to rumors and visit the villages to learn about opportunities to advance ourselves."

There is an unhappy look on Sugihara's face. "Don't we need fine armor and good weapons? Maybe the sale of one or two valuable items would give us the funds to help everyone here. I am loathe to venture into the dangerous countryside without good equipment."

After discussing these issues, you decide to...

[http://code.google.com/p/unmapped/downloads/list ...look at the downloads]<br>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darklands_(video_game) ...ask the tavernkeeper about his younger days of adventuring]<br>[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121701.0 ...consult the scholars who are also experts in dwarven craftsmanship]<br>[http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=30968.0 ...converse with other adventurers who have tried many kinds of quests]<br>[https://soundcloud.com/ssfsx17 ...enjoy the ambient music at this tavern]<br>[http://www.google.com ...search for more choices]<br>[http://www.reddit.com ...discuss unrelated topics to pass the time]

Unmapped is a Darklands-like "role-playing" game with a minimal pure-text interface, powered by the Lanterna GUI library ( http://code.google.com/p/lanterna/ ). The combat is based on The Bard's Tale series. The game has no visual map whatsoever, hence its name.

It requires Java to run. If you can run PCGen, MegaMek, MekHQ, etc., then you should hopefully be able to run this.

Current things to see: * Party of up to 6 characters * Go to the Guild Street or the Garment District for shopping * Go to the temple at the Central Plaza * Go to the slums and pick a fight * Go outside town and explore the countryside, visit a village, or march towards a raubritter's (robber-knight's) tower * Holy Book system, roughly analagous to the Roman Catholic saints systems of Darklands * Source code available under the GPLv2 on Google Code - if there is enough demand then I may also put the source on GitHub

New in 0.0.8: * Random encounters in the countryside - currently, only two are implemented * Main menu is accessible from outside town * There is now a benefit to going to villages that are not evil * Running away from a fight will remove shock damage ("stumbled", "staggered", "totally rocked", etc). Also, shock damage is also always removed while camping/resting, even if the character does not choose to rest. * Bugfixed savegames so that they will keep track of character damage

Planned: * Training non-combat skills - the really good training will require Norton Coins * More encounters of many kinds * More possible encounters when picking a fight in the slums * Ranged weapons with reload time - crossbows and firearms * Other encounters & battles that show off the engine's flexibility, e.g. skeletons who are highly resistant to cutting & piercing damage * More shops and stuff to go in the shops * Improvements to chargen * Alchemy (and Cooking / Food system?) * Ask for music submissions * Implement save files as JSON rather than XML, for maximum resume padding * Finish up the quests that are started in villages

Shelved for later: * Character descriptions - This is not gonna work without a lot of custom coding, because Lanterna UI doesn't have text input boxes that handle multiple lines.

=FAQ=

===How to help?===

Suggestions and feedback!

What takes most of the time is thinking of encounters and all the different things that should be able to happen in them.

===Java is infamous for security issues===

This only applies to the plugins that run Java in a web browser. This affects nVidia's hardware detector, Facebook's advanced photo uploader, and many corporate applets. However, desktop and server Java are still fine. In fact, if desktop and server-side Java had a security issue, the whole corporate world and the entire country of India would melt, but that is another story for another day.

And, if you heard that Java was bad, wait'll you see Flash and Silverlight. Generally, web browser plugins that provide "rich functionality" are inherent security issues.

New release 0.0.6: http://code.google.com/p/unmapped/ * Holy Book system, which is roughly analagous to the Roman Catholic saints system of Darklands. See the temple for your new holy books. Most encounters should also have their "invoke the power of X" options implemented now, if you have the right books. * Bugfixed using items out of combat * Reduced the effectiveness of bandages * Two more stores in the Garment District

New release 0.0.7: http://code.google.com/p/unmapped/ * Raubritters (robber-knights) - outside of town * Enemies can do ranged attacks - the vast majority of them have a roughly 30% chance to do so * Evil villagers have different flavor text in combat

Sorry for the extremely late release, I got very sick. Future releases should be early-and-often again.

New release 0.0.8: http://code.google.com/p/unmapped/ * Random encounters in the countryside - currently, only two are implemented * Main menu is accessible from outside town * There is now a benefit to going to villages that are not evil * Running away from a fight will remove shock damage ("stumbled", "staggered", "totally rocked", etc). Also, shock damage is also always removed while camping/resting, even if the character does not choose to rest. * Bugfixed savegames so that they will keep track of character damage

It is interesting but a bit hard for me to find a way inside. I start the game, create a character and at first I feel kind of lost. I just try to find a way and look at what is there. I lost some money at gambling. Then there are some character abilities that I managed to level up by doing things. Seems interesting. But that's it. I would feel better having something to achieve right at the beginning. A goal or quest to solve. Some Intro.

Anyway, I like the interface technically. It does, what it should. I would like some nice borders though, graphically designed. But that would be against the idea of a pure-text RPG already, huh?

In the end I find that it is not like the books I liked to read 14 years ago. But nice work so far.

It is interesting but a bit hard for me to find a way inside. I start the game, create a character and at first I feel kind of lost. I just try to find a way and look at what is there. I lost some money at gambling. Then there are some character abilities that I managed to level up by doing things. Seems interesting. But that's it. I would feel better having something to achieve right at the beginning. A goal or quest to solve. Some Intro.

Anyway, I like the interface technically. It does, what it should. I would like some nice borders though, graphically designed. But that would be against the idea of a pure-text RPG already, huh?

In the end I find that it is not like the books I liked to read 14 years ago. But nice work so far.

Thank you for your feedback!

The game is in a very early state, so perhaps a good intro quest will be added. It is based on an old MS-DOS RPG named Darklands. It is not meant to have a strong plot like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, nor the Fighting Fantasy books. Everything must be discovered - in fact, the difficulty of different enemies must be discovered by trial and error.

The visual style primarily comes from the Lanterna GUI library - it is very convenient for pure-text games.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org